Sunday, November 17, 2013

On
November 14, 2013 there was a meeting in Amsterdam with
interesting and surprising statements, coming from the financial and business
community in the Netherlands and Europe. They
advocated – in a confidential setting – for measures virtually no socialist party would dare to
take on his behalf. In
business circles one is surprised that people do not rebel against the state’s budget
cuts. Here is a report.

Last
night we had a special, baffling Gulf Group Evening about neoliberalism. One
of the attendees had just returned from a meeting with Dutch bankers and
entrepreneurs, employees of the European Commission and the Dutch Central Bank
and some scientists.Here is a brief
account of the evening. The
following was said by bankers and entrepreneurs, with additions of
participants to the evening:-
The Dutch economic and financial policy is all wrong , the economy is hurt
dramatically by the cuts;-
The multinationals have accumulated too much money and are not investing it
productively; so there is over-accumulation,
a Marxist term used by the bankers;-
The corporate tax for companies should be dramatically and rapidly increased so
that money flows back to the state and can redistribute it;-
The ratio between capital and labour is totally skewed and has grown at the
expense of labor;-
The wages in the Netherlands for many years have been too low and should
urgently be increased because people are not spending and small and medium
businesses go bankrupt;-
The cuts in state expenditures are fragmenting and undermining society;-
It is astonishing that the Dutch do not revolt, said a surprised banker;-
The 3 % target for the government budget deficit relative to GDP, which makes people
widely unemployed and unhappy (according to a recent newspaper article the
suicide rate in the Netherlands has increased by 30 percent) is a randomly picked
rate;-
The banks in the Netherlands are in a precarious situation, because when people
want to get their money en masse from the bank, that money is not there and the
government must intervene with much higher amounts than previously - which is
probably impossible;-
The trade union movement in the Netherlands is very weak, they are wimps, they
walk behind the government policy .

The
participants to the Gulf Group Evening noted that the same austerity policies in the
Netherlands and other European countries in the thirties had led to almost all
political parties to look alike in their austerity drive, and that this had led to a
mellow population that lost confidence in politics, and to the emergence of
nationalist and fascist movements, in the Netherlands and elsewehere, but especially
in Germany. And
it had led to the Second World War.Only
after the devastating war in Europe Keynesian policies were put in place, with
an important role for the state in the economic process, and a
redistribution of power between capital and labour in favour of labour, and the welfare state was carefully built.Participants
also noted that it was strange and unfortunate that it first appeared the
financial and economic crisis of 2008 would lead to a replacement of the global
financial system – that with its derivatives and ever newer and
incomprehensible financial products had become unmanageable - by a better
system, but that nothing was done with the proposals of the international
committees that were set up. The
current financial (non)system just went on, and even deepened. A
large part of the population of Europe goes along with it, and is part of it by
home ownership and as co-holder of the pension system.

About Me

As a kid I liked numbers and the sound of strings. I considered studying engineering but chose social sciences because of my interest in people. I combine a theoretical interest with a practical, social approach which brought me to the sphere of policy research. I am interested in reducing the disparity between poor and rich, between the powerful and the less powerful.
In 1973 and 1982 I lived in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, I was able to create an international forum to discuss the functioning of the international monetary system and the debt crisis, the Forum on Debt and Development (FONDAD). I established it with the view that the debt crisis of the 1980s was a symptom of a malfunctioning, flawed global monetary and financial system.
I was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Network on Debt and Development that was established at the end of the 1980s to help put pressure on European policymakers.
In 1990, before the beginning of the Gulf War, I cofounded the Golfgroep, a discussion group about international politics comprising journalists, scientists, politicians and activists that meets regularly.
The website of FONDAD is www.fondad.org